


Roommates

by combefemme



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-V2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/combefemme/pseuds/combefemme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s during post-party pancakes that they realize Tommy has nowhere to go.</p><p>Or, Tommy is technically homeless so Kate gives him a place to stay and things get complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roommates

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place pretty much immediately after the end of Volume 2.

It’s during post-party pancakes that they realize Tommy has nowhere to go. 

“What’s wrong with my apartment?” Tommy asks, his fork freezing halfway to his mouth and dripping syrup back onto his plate.

“You’ve been gone for months,” David answers. “No one’s been paying rent on it. I doubt it’s _yours_ anymore.”

Tommy huffs and slouches back in the booth, his arm falling back down to the table, pancakes forgotten.

Kate watches him closely. His lips are pressed tight together, eyes troubled, and there’s a little wrinkle between his brows that she’s never noticed before. His hair is longer than she’s used to and she realizes with a guilty jolt that even before he went missing it had been at least six months since they’d spoken. She finds herself wondering if she even knows the boy sitting before her anymore.

She hadn’t even known he’d had his own apartment.

“Where am I gonna sleep tonight?” Tommy murmurs, eyes fixed on a crack in the faux-wood tabletop.

Billy opens his mouth, probably to remind them – yet again – that they’re always welcome at his parents’ place, but Kate gets there first. 

“You can stay with me,” she says before she can think about it too much. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Billy and Teddy exchange a glance. 

Tommy looks up at her, surprised, and that hurts, too. Is it really so shocking that Kate would want to help him?

“Really?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Kate replies with a nonchalant shrug and she can feel Noh-Varr’s eyes boring holes in the side of her head, knows that he’s been watching her and Tommy since the clock struck twelve but unlike their dancing, no part of this is to make him jealous. “I mean, I’m staying at my dad’s place while he’s out of town and there’s about a million extra bedrooms so I’ll hardly even notice you.”

Tommy nods, looking away again. “Right,” he says. “Thanks.”

It’s not exactly the reaction Kate had been expecting. He doesn’t even crack a smile. She used to be able to read him like a book, but now she has no idea what he’s thinking. She doesn’t get much time to dwell on it, though, because with the matter settled everyone goes back to their pancakes and the subject changes.

XxXx

America roundhouse kicks a hole in the very fabric of reality and turns back to them with a suggestively raised eyebrow.

“This is you, princess,” she says and smirks. “You and Tommy.”

“Thanks,” Kate replies tightly, ignoring America’s expression.

“Yeah,” Tommy adds, his voice slightly higher than usual as he looks at the newly formed gap in the space-time continuum. “Thanks.”

They say their goodbyes to the rest of the group and Kate finds more smirks and eyebrows that need ignoring on Billy and Teddy’s faces. David has a similar look on his face but, Kate notes, it seems to be directed at Tommy, who gives him a half-hearted shove. David just laughs.

They step through the star-shaped portal, which promptly closes behind them, and find themselves standing in front of her father’s Westchester mansion. 

“I thought you had your own place?” Tommy asks as they walk up the steps.

“I do,” Kate replies. “My dad just asked me to stay here while he’s out of town. He says he doesn’t like leaving it empty for that long, but, honestly, I just don’t think he approves of where I live.”

“Where’s that?” Tommy leans against the wall as she digs through her purse for her keys. 

“Bed-Stuy,” she tells him absently as she opens the door. “Clint’s place.”

Tommy pauses at this, surprised. “You moved in with Barton?”

Kate rolls her eyes as she leads him inside. “I did not _move in_ with Clint. I just moved into the same building --” she falters here for a second and then, maybe a little too quickly “— which he happens to own.”

Tommy turns to her with a raised eyebrow, an all-too familiar smirk on his face. “Tell the truth,” he teases. There’s a glint in his eye and for a second it’s like they’re sixteen again. “Is he your sugar daddy?”

She smacks him in the arm with the back of her hand. “Gross, no!”

But Tommy’s laughing and she’s smiling and, God, how did she not realize how much she missed him?

“Come on,” she says, taking his hand before she can stop herself and leading him up the grand staircase in the front foyer. He doesn’t react except to squeeze her fingers so quickly she probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she wasn’t so aware of his hand in hers.

She leads him to a spare bedroom and if it happens to be the one across the hall from her own room, well, that’s just because it’s the nicest one in the house. She leaves him there and ducks into the room next door, this one belonging to her sister, Susan. She opens the closet and smiles when she finds exactly what she was looking for: men’s clothes. They belong to Susan’s husband, Brad, left here the last time the two of them came to stay.

Back in the spare bedroom she finds Tommy lying sideways on the bed, his legs hanging over the edge. She tosses the clothes she found down next to him and Tommy sits up.

“My brother-in-law’s,” Kate explains. “It’s not much, but anything’s better than spandex.”

Tommy huffs a laugh and nods as he examines what she brought him. “Thanks.”

She shrugs, suddenly feeling awkward standing in the middle of the room. She can’t figure out what to do with her hands. “Don’t mention it.”

“Really, Kate,” he says, meeting her eye and with more sincerity in his voice than she thinks she’s ever heard. “Thanks for this.”

It’s a strange moment and one so unlike any that have passed between them before that Kate finds herself at a loss for words. Suddenly there’s a million things she wants to say to him about how relieved she is to have him back and how scared she’d been when he was missing; about how much she’d missed him and the team and heroing; about how he was right, that they never should have quit in the first place.

Instead, she looks away, swallows, nods. “Anytime.”

The silence that follows is palpable until finally Kate can’t take it anymore. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Tommy replies, neither of them mentioning the sunlight that’s already creeping over the horizon outside.

She gets back to her own room so fast you’d think she was the speedster and ends up leaning against her closed bedroom door.

“C’mon, Katie,” she mumbles to herself, head falling back against the door with a soft _thunk_. “It’s just Tommy.”

 _Except it’s not just Tommy_ , something in her says. _Not anymore. He grew up._

(Another voice, one deeper down that Kate is more adept at ignoring, says that he’s never been _just_ Tommy.)

Kate thinks about the little crease between his brows at the diner; about the job David claims he not only had but excelled at; about the look in his eyes when he realized he was basically homeless. 

But then she thinks about the way he’d pulled her into a kiss at midnight and the way they’d danced for hours like no one else in the room mattered and the glint in his eye when he’d been teasing her downstairs.

She sighs but when she pushes herself upright to start getting ready for bed there’s a smile on her face.

She falls asleep that night feeling more relieved than anything else. He is different now, more grown up, more responsible – hell, Kate is, too – but the sarcastic boy with the big smile and a penchant for mischief isn’t gone. He’s still Tommy. He’s still _her_ Tommy. 

And, more importantly, he’s alive. That alone would be more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to let me know what you think and if I should bother continuing this or not. You can also find me [on tumblr.](www.twinedjupiters.tumblr.com)


End file.
